Gene Kelly and Bernie Sandler in the new studios of WBEN-FM in 1960. WBEN-FM was Buffalo’s first FM station starting in 1946. First broadcasting at 106.5FM, the station moved frequencies to 102.5FM in 1959. The following year, WBEN-FM moved into expansive new studios at 2077 Elmwood Avenue, where the station would remain until 2000, through call letter changes to WMJQ-FM and then WTSS-FM.
In 1963, Buffalo boasted 11 commercial AM stations and 11 commercial FM stations.
And by the mid-1960s, those stations on the FM dial had begun the transformation that would make Frequency Modulation radio’s future and driving force.
The decade started with an appreciation of the calm of the FM dial.
One letter to the editor read, “Buy an F. M. (frequency modulation) radio. They don’t cost much more than an ordinary A.M. set. But music comes out of an F. M. radio—not that jabberwocky they call music on A.M. stations. Station WBNY-FM Buffalo, and WHLD-FM Niagara Falls, have good music all day long and some of the evening WBEN-FM has supper concerts. All these stations have music for the human race. No one will need a psychiatrist even after hours of listening to them.”
Another Courier-Express reader wrote that he “certainly would hate to see the FM band cluttered with rock ‘n’ roll.”
By the end of the decade, both would be terribly disheartened.
106.5FM was the longtime home of middle-of-the-road, easy listening music for two decades. WADV-FM signed on in 1962, and became the first Buffalo station to broadcast in stereo. Dan Lesniak was a WKBW Salesman when he and his wife Nancy founded the station, which they owned until 1981, when it became WYRK-FM. WADV-FM morning man Lou German.
George “The Hound” Lorenz grew tired of working for other people, and founded WBLK-FM. The legendary Buffalo disc-jockey threw the switch to put his station on the air on Dec. 11, 1964.
After years as chief announcer and then station manager at the old WBNY-AM, Carl Spavento was an FM pioneer. He spent nearly a decade expanding the offerings of WBUF-FM, which began broadcasting in 1947. Among his innovations: music and grocery descriptions broadcast for playback over the public address speakers at Tops Friendly Markets when the chain opened in 1962.
Along with other longtime radio veterans Ed Little and Danny McBride, Spavento was part of the team who put WBNY-FM 96.1 on the air in 1966. Operations manager Ed Little said the music fare will be “stimulating, with good taste and excitement, and the lively sounds will be transmitted with enough power to reach the entire Niagara megalopolis and nearby Canada.”
Spavento later moved to WYSL as news director, before joining re-joining WBUF-FM in 1981, where he was heard reading the news on the Stan Roberts Show, among other duties over a Buffalo radio career that spanned 50 years.
WHLD-FM in Niagara Falls would eventually become WZIR and WXRT, before changing call signs to WKSE-FM, broadcasting as Kiss 98.5 since 1985.
WWOL-FM signed on in 1954 at 104.1FM. WGR signed on WGR-FM at 96.9FM in 1959, and WEBR signed on WEBR-FM at 94.5FM in 1960.
This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon
The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.
For many kids and teens of the Eisenhower era, the different kinds of sounds coming out of radios gave them something of their own to listen to while doing their homework or on a transistor radio snuck under a pillow after bedtime.
There are also those who listened to deejays like The Hound and Lucky Pierre and were inspired to spend the next 60 years entertaining the world.
For example, Buffalo radio legends Sandy Beach and Jefferson Kaye, both of whom grew up in Massachusetts, listened to the Hound over KB’s powerful signal as youngsters and cited him as an inspiration.
But right here in Buffalo, a handful of the boys who’d be the broadcast Pied Pipers of their generation got their radio start in an old brick building in South Buffalo’s Seneca-Babcock neighborhood.
A group of friends from St. Monica’s grammar school on Orlando Street spent most of the rest of their free time at the Boys’ Club a couple blocks away on Babcock Street.
The club’s organized activities, mostly sports, weren’t exactly what these boys were after. “They weren’t much for boxing,” activities director Jimmy Coyle would say for years after, “they were more for talking.”
Past members of the Babcock Boys’ Club, from the Courier-Express, 1964
Danny Neaverth, Joe Pinto (who’d later become Joey Reynolds on the radio), Bill Masters (who spent 20 years on WEBR and WBEN), Danny McBride (whose local broadcasting career spanned 60 years) were all major players starting a closed-circuit radio station for the club.
Joey Pinto, center, brought his home record player to the Boys’ Club when the one in the club broke. That’s Joe Marszalak and Richard Quinn with him in a photo that ran in the Buffalo Evening News in 1956.
The boys convinced Boys’ Club manager Gurney Jenkins to get rid of an old jukebox that played 78 rpm records for Monday night dances and replace it with a modern record player and a microphone. Once they got the green light, all the boys went to work.
WBCB could only be heard inside the Babcock Boys’ Club, but offered Buffalo the first taste of what would fill the airwaves for decades to come.
Joe Pinto sent letters to record promoters and radio stations asking for old, about to be discarded, or greatly discounted records. He walked all over the city to collect the 45s which offered a more modern beat for the Boys’ Club dances.
Neaverth and McBride wired the whole building for sound, and now the set-up was more than just for dances in the gym. There was music, news, and even commercials on a regular schedule. They boys eventually started doing play-by-play of the sporting events at the club.
And a decade before their KB Radio cross-talk between Neaverth’s afternoon show and Reynolds’ evening show became the talk of Buffalo, the same two kids became the talk of South Buffalo with their “pretend” radio station at the Boys’ Club.
While Danny and Joey were at The Boys’ Club and Bishop Timon, Tom Shannon was at Bishop Ryan High, getting one of his first on air gigs leading the school in the rosary as Fr. Rufus looked on.
Boys’ Club veteran Danny McBride serves Pepsi-Cola and hot dogs at a WEBR Record Hop.
WEBR deejays Tap Taplin, Bob Wells, Bernie Sandler, and Jack Eno prepare to broadcast live for a full week from the newest Your Host restaurant in the Sheridan Drive Plaza, Sheridan at Niagara Falls Blvd. in 1953.
This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon
The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.
It was vestige of the Vaudeville days—wives and husbands as co-emcees on radio and television, usually hosting otherwise normal shows, only with a special kind of schtick to fall back on.
The successful and beloved team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, the married stars of one of radio’s most successful network programs from 1936-50, was all the blueprint local radio programmers needed.
Billy and Reggie Keaton were among the earliest married teams on Buffalo radio starting in the mid-40s, but soon they weren’t alone.
When Budd Hulick– half of the sensational Stoopnagle & Budd comedy team of the 1930s—returned to Western New York radio in the late 40s, he was joined by his wife, Helen. They first appeared on WHLD in her native Niagara Falls, before moving to WKBW for a few years on the “Mr. & Mrs.” show. They moved south in the mid-50s, hosting a show on WPTV Ch.5 in Palm Beach starting in 1956.
The Hulicks chat with Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz on a press trip to Buffalo.
Mary Jane and Seymour Abeles hosted “The Shopper’s Guide” on Ch.4.
Both Buffalo natives, Mary Jane was billed as Buffalo’s “first and only” female disc jockey during the war years on WGR, and Seymour was a longtime radio actor on all the stations in Buffalo—and received a Bronze star and Purple Heart in the Pacific during World War II.
Bernie and Norma Jean Sandler were well-known for hosting programs showcasing the talents of young people. Future radio stars Danny Neaverth, Tommy Shannon, and Joey Reynolds were all guest teen deejays on Sandler’s “The Young Crowd” on WEBR.
Bernie Sandler was a teenaged bandleader while still at Bennett High School, playing gigs at The Colvin Gables and the Glen Casino. After serving in North Africa and Italy during World War II, Sandler moved to radio—first at WBTA in Batavia and then Buffalo’s WEBR–where he’d replace Ed Little as the emcee of the Town Casino show in 1953—before moving onto WBEN AM-FM-TV in 1959.
After Bernie had gone to work full-time in marketing for the Iroqouis Brewery and Norma Jane was the director of the Studio Arena School of Theater, the couple hosted “The Sandler Style” on WADV-FM starting in 1969. They were also trusted spokespeople thought the years, often seen together in TV commercials for everything from applesauce to carpets. At the time he died in 1992, Bernie was still on the air weekly at WECK, playing big band music over the radio for the same folks who danced to his live band performances 50 years earlier.
Buffalo’s best remembered husband and wife started a 21-year run on Ch.4 on Jan. 17, 1950, with a little cooking, a couple interviews, and a lot of bickering.
“Meet the Millers” with Bill and Mildred Miller was a Buffalo television staple, weekday afternoons for more than two decades.
The program was a melding of the couple’s skills. They’d spent more than 20 years entertaining together on the Vaudeville circuit. He was a dancer — even once on Broadway – and she was his piano playing accompanist.
They retired from stage work to Buffalo for health reasons, opening a turkey farm in the Town of Colden—only to answer the call to TV after a handful of very successful cooking segments around Thanksgiving time in 1949.
From the onset, “Meet the Millers” was nominally about “using economy in preparing food,” but housewives tuning in around Western New York were just as likely to be entertained by the sometimes-hostile relationship between Bill and Mildred and Mildred’s tendency to put Bill in his place regularly. For better or worse, they were Western New York’s quintessential quibbling couple.
The show grew to include interview segments which aired Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with cooking segments on Tuesday and Thursday.
The big-name stars who came through Buffalo stayed at the Statler, and that’s where Bill and Mildred did their show through the 1950s.
Stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Bennett were guests through the years.
Starting with their first summer on the air, the Millers made bringing Western New York’s agricultural fairs to TV viewers a priority.
As the owners of a 350-acre farm, and Bill’s role as past president of the state turkey growers’ association, the Millers became closely associated especially with the Erie County Fair, from which their show was broadcast live every year.
The Millers were in the inaugural class of the Erie County Fair Hall of Fame in 1989.
After the couple retired from television, Bill was elected Colden supervisor and served through the early 1980s.
The couple moved to Florida, where they passed away in the early 1990s.
Bill and Mildred didn’t necessarily cook all the food they showed on TV, and they certainly didn’t do the dishes—most of the real kitchen work was done by women like Margaret Teasley, seen here offering some of the shows leftovers to the “Meet the Millers” crew, including Producer Bernie Ross, cameraman Art Lester, floorman Bud Hagmann and studio supervisor Gene Klumpp.
“Rising enthusiasm in FM listening throughout Western New York is expected to continue in 1952,” started a story in The Buffalo Evening News. Although WBEN first started experimenting with FM on W8XH in 1934, WBEN-FM was Buffalo’s first frequency modulation station when it signed on in 1946. Other FM stations signed on the air quickly, and by 1950, there were plenty of choices on the FM dial—although programming was slow to develop for the much clearer sounding band.
It wouldn’t be until the late 60s and beyond when many of these still-familiar frequencies would come into their own with programming beyond “whatever was left over” from AM sister stations.
WBEN-FM changed frequencies from 106.5FM to 102.5FM in 1958 so that the station could increase its power.
The Four Quarters were regular entertainers on WBEN-TV. Bass player Bassie Atkinson was the only Buffalonian—a Central High grad. Kenneth Strother was on piano; Reggie Willis, guitar; and Eddie Inge, clarinet.
Akron’s Miller Bros. Band, shown with Ted Mack as contestants on the Original Amateur Hour, a network program which aired on Ch.4.
Marion Roberts was the hostess of Ch. 4’s Plain & Fancy Cooking weekday mornings through much of the 1950s. Her “timely tips make homemaking easier and cooking more exciting,” according to a 1955 ad. Ch.4’s mid-50s weekday local lineup included Roberts, John Corbett, and Mildred & Bill Miller, all with shows aimed at the housewife.
He came to Buffalo as Ch.4 first signed on— and over the next 30 years, there weren’t many radio & TV personalities who saw more airtime than WBEN’s John Corbett.
Through the 1950s, he was hosting 11 weekly radio shows and was Ch.4’s “Speaker of the House” host weekdays at 12:15pm. Through the 60s and 70s, his duties turned more to news, and in the early 70s, was one of the most seen faces of TV news in Buffalo.
His contract was left to expire in 1977. He was approached about running for mayor, and even considered it— but ultimately did not, and instead, that election saw James D. Griffin begin his four-term stretch in Buffalo’s City Hall.
Celebrating the fifth anniversary of WBEN’s Breakfast at the Sheraton with engineer Peter Koelemeyer, organist Nelson Shelby, producer Gene Brook (who also played “Grumbles the Elf” on the Santa show), baritone Harry Schad, and emcees John Corbett and Ed Dinsmore in 1954.
Four years later, John Corbett and Dick Rifenburg celebrate the show’s anniversary.
In 1959, the Sheraton Gang included organist Norm Wullen, Dick Rifenburg, and John Corbett.
By the following year, the Sheraton breakfast show had given way to The Statler Luncheon Club, in the hotel’s Grover Cleveland Room. Virgil Booth and Mike Mearian were the hosts.
Ed Dinsmore was everywhere on Ch.4 in the station’s earliest days, as one of the station’s primary newscasters, playing Santa on the Santa show, and host of Breakfast at Sheraton on the radio. Dinsmore might have been Buffalo’s most familiar local TV face when he died suddenly in 1954.
Ed Dinsmore (left) and crew get ready for a newscast from the Statler studios of Ch.4, 1954.
Van Miller joined the staff at WBEN-TV as a summer relief announcer in 1955, and didn’t leave for 43 years. In this mid-50s shot, Van is anchoring the news while Chuck Healy anchors sports. The pair would play the opposite roles on the same newscast together through much of the following decade.
The first Buffalo scientist to talk meteorology regularly on Buffalo TV was Buffalo Weather Bureau Chief Barney Wiggin.
“Weather with Wiggin” ran Monday evenings in the early 1950s on Ch.4.
This page is an excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon
The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.
By Steve Cichon
